Author Jamaica Kincaid answers Trump at Key West High School appearance

Author Jamaica Kincaid minced no words Friday when introducing herself to a group of Key West High School students, the morning after she opened the Key West Literary Seminar which this year has the theme “Writers of the Caribbean.”

“I'm a person from a shitty country,” said Kincaid, who was born Elaine Potter Richardson in Antigua, in response to reports that President Donald Trump used the word shit hole to describe Haiti and other poor countries.

“Sometimes extraordinary things happen to people from shitty countries,” she later said. “Not just Norway.”

Kincaid, 68, who has written for The New Yorker and authored a list of short stories, novels and essays, repeated the word throughout her appearance at Key West High, where about 100 students gathered to hear her discuss her work and her life.

Words are always important, Kincaid suggested as she chose hers carefully, defining “conservative” as meaning racist in the United States, and she chose “prudish” to describe her childhood when asked by a student if she grew up in a conservative family.

Everything is political, said Kincaid, who was raised in a country then under British rule. She had a photo of the Queen Elizabeth II and her husband Price Philip on her school notebook.

“Everything about us was politicized,” she said. “That was the first thing we saw when we took out our notebooks. I had to know the monarchs of England. Why do I know the Battle of Hastings living in a little island somewhere?”

Kincaid said, “Getting out of bed is a political statement.”

Kincaid grew up wanting to be Charlotte Bronte and at 17 was sent to the U.S. by her mother to work as an au pair. She could read by the time she was 3 and her mother sent her to school two years early. Becoming a writer was like a fairytale fantasy, she has said.

“Everything that happens is important,” she said, describing a childhood memory in which her classmates threw her into a toilet, drawing giggles from the students. “I learned something from that. I don’t remember what I learned.”

Kincaid, humble and soft-spoken, admitted she was wearing her pajama bottoms and at one point asked the students if she was talking about things they were interested in.

“I’m speaking to you as adults,” she said.

This story was originally published January 15, 2018 at 11:21 AM with the headline "Author Jamaica Kincaid answers Trump at Key West High School appearance."